20 Crazy People Who Claimed to Be God

20-People-Who-Claimed-to-Be-God

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at twenty individuals who presented themselves as a God or Christ-like figure.

Krishna Venta

Francis Pencovic fought for America in World War II before turning to religion and starting his own organization, stating quite bluntly, “I am Christ.” Now going by the title Krishna Venta, he claimed to have been born on a planet called Neophrates, which faced an extinction event and sent a number of survivors off-planet in giant spaceships. These spaceships then landed on and colonized Earth. Pencovic gained a following, starting a cult called Fountain of the World which operated out of California. He was ultimately killed in a bombing that was instigated by two former followers, who wished to bestow vengeance on Venta for numerous transgressions.

Alan John Miller

Known as A.J. to his followers, Alan John Miller is the founder of a new religious cult called Divine Truth. He runs the cult with his partner Mary Luck, and together they proclaim to be the reincarnated forms of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Funnily enough, most of Divine Truth’s teachings and prayers are ripped straight from a publication called “True Gospel Revealed Anew by Jesus.” This was written by a man named James Padgett - a lawyer who claimed to have communicated with Jesus. Ah, but Miller has a clever way to avoid the plagiarism accusations! You see, since Miller IS Jesus, and Jesus dictated the writings to Padgett, the teachings are technically Miller’s. Genius!

Hogen Fukunaga

Here we have another reincarnated Jesus, as well as the Buddha, this time in the form of Hogen Fukunaga. In 1987, Fukunaga formed an organization called Ho No Hana which was officially recognized by the Japanese government, even though it was largely based on deception. Fukunaga and others he appointed had the ability to read the soles of people’s feet, and in these soles they could tell fortunes. Of course, this was all a scam concocted by Fukunaga, who stole cash from his desperate customers. He ultimately conned more than 10,000 people out of 60 billion yen before he was arrested and imprisoned.

Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez

Throughout the fall of 2011, many who knew Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez noticed that he was acting strangely. An unemployed 21-year-old, Ortega-Hernandez was reportedly making bizarre statements and acting paranoid, claiming that the world was ending and that Barack Obama was controlling the citizenry with GPS implants. He also sent a home video to Oprah, claiming that he was a reincarnated Jesus Christ. Ortega-Hernandez told one of his friends that Obama needed to be stopped, and he then traveled to Washington, D.C. from Idaho. On the night of November 11, 2011, he took shots at the White House using a semiautomatic rifle. Luckily, no one was injured, and Ortega-Hernandez was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Ernest Norman

After working as a spiritualist minister for fifteen years, Ernest Norman founded what is now the Unarius Academy of Science, a non-profit organization based out of California modeled after Norman’s “teachings.” According to the doctrine, Norman was Jesus Christ and his followers had been Jesus’ various followers and enemies, including Pontius Pilate. They have since been reincarnated to atone for their past karma and follow the teachings of Jesus - or, rather, Ernest Norman. He believed that humanity was being watched over by some type of higher beings called Space Brothers, and that one could make contact with the Space Brothers by unlocking dormant psychic abilities. Of course, to unlock these powers you have to pay Unarius $15 a week in meeting fees…

Shoko Asahara

Beginning in the early 1980s, Chizuo Matsumoto began taking an interest in religion, yoga, and meditation, and studying Chinese Taoism. Before long, he was declaring himself the “enlightened one” and the Lamb of God, which is a title for Jesus Christ. Like the Lamb of God, Matsumoto hoped to take away the sins of the world, and to do this he started a doomsday cult that would instigate the apocalypse and save the chosen few. He began calling himself Shoko Asahara and founded the cult Aum Shinrikyo. In March of 1995, the cult poisoned the Tokyo subway system, killing fourteen and injuring over 1,000. Asahara was arrested and ultimately executed in July 2018.

Sun Myung Moon

A powerful businessman, Sun Myung Moon could seemingly do it all. After being born in what is now North Korea, Moon called himself the Second Coming of Christ and started the Unification Church. Founded back in 1954, Moon founded the Church to continue Jesus’s teachings, even writing his own piece of scripture called the Divine Principle. Moon quickly found himself a powerful figure, cozying up to world leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush. But the Unification Church has drawn intense criticism, with many claiming that the Church demands exorbitant fees from its followers and often exploits them out of their life savings.

Apollo Quiboloy

This pastor from the Philippines has high aspirations, calling himself both the “Appointed Son of God” and even “the Owner of the Universe.” He is also the founder of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, a Restorationist church that has been the subject of numerous controversies. In 2024, the Senate of the Philippines issued an arrest warrant for Quiboloy, and he is currently wanted by the FBI on charges of human trafficking, fraud, and money laundering. Aside from the charges, Quiboloy has also attracted controversy for making offensive statements related to his supposed divinity. For example, he claimed to have stopped the 2019 Cotabato earthquakes and promised that he would end the COVID pandemic if America dropped its charges against him.

Mitsuo Matayoshi

Known for being a perennial political candidate, Mitsuo Matayoshi ran up to sixteen failed candidacies between 1997 and 2017. His campaigns were often riddled with eccentric speeches and ideas, like Matayoshi urging his opponents to disembowel themselves so they could face divine punishment in Jerusalem. You see, Matayoshi claimed to be God, and in 1997 he founded a conservative Christian organization called the World Economic Community Party. It was through this party that he was to become the sole leader of the world and then carry out Judgment Day on humanity. It didn’t work. He never won an election and died of kidney cancer in 2018.

Laszlo Toth

Go to Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City and you will find Michelangelo’s Madonna della Pietà encased behind bulletproof glass. And to find out the reason, we must go back to 1972. A Hungarian named Laszlo Toth had recently arrived in Rome, hoping to be officially recognized as the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. And on May 21, Toth walked into Saint Peter’s Basilica wielding a hammer and yelling “I am Jesus Christ risen from the dead!” He then used the hammer on the statue, striking it fifteen times and breaking Mary’s arm, nose, and eye. He later told authorities that God told him to do it. Toth spent two years in a psychiatric hospital, and La Pietà was restored and encased behind glass.

Ariffin Mohammed

Also known as Ayah Pin to his followers, Ariffin Mohammed claimed to be the “King of the Sky,” as well as the reincarnation of Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus, and Shiva. Pin “learned” of this from an angel, which first came to him when he was between 10-12 and then again in his early 30s to inform him he was God. Given his godhood, Pin had a skill set that included invisibility and the capacity for telepathic killing. Mostly, however, Pin oversaw unusual building projects – including a giant teapot – around the compound of his sect - known as the Sky Kingdom – in Malaysia. By the time of his 2005 exile to Thailand, Pin claimed to have 10,000 followers worldwide.

Wayne Bent

Known to some as Michael Travesser, Bent – a convicted sex-offender – is the leader of The Lord Our Righteousness Church, in New Mexico. A former Seventh-day Adventist pastor, Bent claimed to have been informed directly from God that he, in fact, was the Messiah. His special mission was to sleep with seven virgins – some of whom he allegedly found among the daughters of his Strong City followers. Statutory rape and Messiah complexes aside, Bent's other claim to fame was his prediction of the world's end, which he deduced – wrongly we now know – was to occur on October 31st, 2007.

Sergey Torop

Known as Vissarion, and leading the Vissarionites, Sergey Torop is the founder of the Church of the Last Testament. A Red Army vet, Torop was a traffic cop, until he was sacked in 1989. Soon after, Torop began having revelations and realized that he was not God, but rather, a reincarnated Jesus Christ, making him the Word of God. The sect leader considers the Virgin Mary to be his biological mother, and has even modeled his look after his mother's better-known son. Vissarion claims to have a following of around 4000 Russians, with a global reach of around 10,000, and uses a modified calendar set by his arrival on Earth.

Delores Kane

This former MI5 operative broke ties with the agency and in 1997 leaked claims to the press that it was committing unwarranted investigations against socialist politicians. Tried under the Official Secrets Act 1989, she eventually became a vocal part of groups like the 9/11 Truth Movement and a fan of David Icke, and took up a hard-line anti-Zionist stance. In the late 2000s, Kane began claiming to be the Messiah Jesus Christ and holder of the secret of eternal life. So far, not many seem to have been convinced of this.

Inri Cristo

Born Álvaro Theiss, Inri Cristo claims that “a powerful voice” speaks to him. It compelled him to leave his parents when he was 13, and it was what brought him back from atheism, and informed him that he was the Second Coming. Taking a new name – mostly an acronym for King of the Jews - Inri set about wandering the Earth and visited 27 countries to spread his word. He was also kicked out of at least three, those being Venezuela, the UK, and the United States, but was harbored – if not welcomed – by the French.

José Luis de Jesús Miranda

According to José Luis de Jesús Miranda – his actual name – sin is a thing of the past. Our sin-free world began when he discovered that he wasn't just cleverly named. In his 20s, Miranda said he was visited by angels who informed him of his true calling. He then set about founding the Creciendo en Gracia church, and began to claim to be Paul the Apostle. In 2005, he traded Paul for Jesus, claiming to be Jesus Christ Man, and this was followed soon after by claims to be the Antichrist. Miranda died in 2013 of cirrhosis of the liver – a condition very much at odds with his so-called immortality.

Marshall Applewhite

Claiming not only to be God, but also a “level above human,” Marshall Applewhite differed from his contemporaries by not only touting eternal life with God, but also a chance to get out of Earth before it was “recycled.” The best way to do that was to join the Heaven's Gate cult. A religious sect with a sci-fi twist, the cult planned to escape by catching a spacecraft that was trailing the Hale-Bopp comet. Unfortunately, suicide was not only a requirement for boarding the ship, but it was the method, and in 1997 Applewhite and his 38 followers were found dead in a rented Californian mansion.

David Koresh

Born Vernon Howell, David Koresh first encountered the Branch Davidians when he moved to Waco, Texas in the early 1980s. It was in Waco that Koresh changed his name, and found a place where he became a leader. It wasn’t long before he claimed to be the son of God, with a gift of prophecy. However, allegations of child abuse and illegal weapons got the Federal Government involved and set the stage for an infamous 51 day standoff. 4 ATF agents and 6 Branch Divisions were shot and killed before a fire killed 76 Branch Davidians, including Koresh.

Charles Manson

For many, the name “Charles Manson” is synonymous with pure evil. Manson spent his youth committing crimes and bouncing from boys’ homes to prison, until he emerged in the late 1960s during the hippie movement. During this time, he pieced together what became known as the Manson Family. Living in a commune, Manson claimed to be God or at least God’s son, and prophesied an oncoming race war. In 1969, he instructed his followers to carry out the murders of actress Sharon Tate and 5 others. From this, Manson gained global infamy, as well as a life sentence owing to seven counts of first-degree murder, and one count of conspiracy.

Jim Jones

The architect of the largest mass suicide in Amerrican history, Jim Jones was the founder of the Peoples Temple, originally founded in Indianapolis, then based in California but later relocated to Jonestown, Guyana. Claiming to be Jesus – among others – Jones spread messages of racial equality, socialist and communist ideals, but human rights abuse claims lead to an investigation by US Congressman Leo Ryan in 1978. When Jones allowed Ryan to free people who claimed to be held in Jonestown against their will, Jones launched an attack, killing Ryan and some of his party. In the wake of this, Jones then initiated the mass suicide of him and his followers, via cyanide poisoning.


Can you think of any other examples? Let us know in the comments below!